SMOKING will be banned in a county council's 400-plus buildings. Cheshire's policy committee has approved a health strategy which will eventually stop more than 21,000 employees smoking at work.

The policy will become effective before 2004 in all the council's administration buildings and governors of 350 schools across the county will be urged to follow suit.

The local authority is about eight years behind its counterparts in Greater Manchester.

Tameside was the last council to ban smoking in 1996.

The unanimously approved motion was proposed by leader of the Cheshire Labour councillor Derek Bateman, a reformed smoker.

He said: ''Having myself been fitted with a pacemaker and lost friends from lung cancer, I have ample reasons to support a policy aimed at protecting the whole of our workforce. ''But that policy does also understand difficulties smokers may have in giving up - hence the two-year period before we introduce a complete ban.

''And it makes an exception in some establishments providing care for older people by setting aside a room where clients could smoke.''